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A review by katyanaish
Fantasy of Flight by Kelly St. Clare
2.0
Let's just say that I have some serious qualms.
Firstly, for the record, I'm taking this off my fantasy list. There's no supernatural elements. It's a fiction book, taking place on a fiction world, but I don't think it qualifies as fantasy unless it has something supernatural going on - magic, supernatural beings, etc.
Anyway.
I'm falling on the side of dislike for the lead female. She's inconsistent, she makes terrible snap judgments, and she's falling in love with a complete dickhead. More on that in a minute. But basically, I can't get past the way Olina/Frost/Willow/who-the-fuck-ever (she goes by like 5983456 names in this series) allows herself to be treated. We get to see so many scenes of her being a badass - and that really plays out in this book, honestly - followed immediately by her being a doormat. Plus ... what is her plan? I mean, there's zero thought behind any action she takes - she pretty much just careens from encounter to encounter. I don't understand how she ever thought she was going to pop away for a couple days to investigate, and then pop back. I don't understand how she planned to track down the arrow ... she pretty much just wanders down the street asking every random person she encounters. Guys, I'm being literal - that is ACTUALLY what she does. I don't understand what her plan is when she decides to be, like, a cage-match fighter. What? No, really, why? How does this further ANY of her goals? How does she see any of this playing out?
The answer, unfortunately, is that when it comes to broad choices, she is TSTL. But it's weird because she can - and does - handle herself capably in other encounters. She seems to careen wildly between acting like 15 year old, and acting like a 25 year old. It is incredibly frustrating.
In this book, we meet and become attached to a whole new cast of characters. The good news is that I liked them all a lot more than I liked the dickheads from book 1 - I just don't really care for either court at all. I thought this was a good development, and I hoped it meant that the overbearing violent asshole (Javon) that seemed to be the future love interest was not going to be that at all. Honestly, a lot of this book played out like ... plot twist, he was just as much a bad guy as her mom!
Because you guys, he was.
He's been over-the-top violent towards her from the moment we met him. At first, it was fine - there was a question about whether she killed his brother. But then, when he clearly believes she loved his brother, he's still that way. He is constantly smashing into her room, pinning her to walls, ripping her veil off, shouting in her face, grabbing her around the arms and holding her off the ground to shout more... I mean, wtf, seriously. Plus, he knows her secret, but can he be a decent fucking human being about it? No. He screams at her that if she takes her veil off, he'll kill her, and he refuses to tell her why. JUST LIKE HER MOTHER. Then when she realizes why - she finally gets a look at her face (*eyeroll*) - she realizes he's been using her as a trump card. He knows her secret, and that puts him in a pretty strong position, both against her mother and also possibly as his little pet ruler that he can control via blackmail.
Yuck.
Then in this book, we see that he apparently considers a large swath of his own people - the outer rings folks - to be scum. He regularly rounds up the people in this fight club thing, and just ... has his guards kill them in this big dome, Gladiator style. What? Why?! Who does this?! This gets his guards killed. It gets all these people killed ... people he hasn't bothered to investigate or anything. He knows less than nothing about them. They are in a fight tournament thing, where the goal is to knock your opponent out - it's basically MMA fighting. And we spend the vast majority of this book in this location, where we discover that while, yes, there are some violent assholes (Slay, etc), the vast majority of the fighters are pretty cool, supportive, etc. But Jovan has his guards just round up everyone - including people on the sidelines (Crystal) - herd them to the dome, and then send guards in there endlessly until they are all dead.
Who the fuck does that? Is that supposed to be a character I like?
But Lina fights him. And fights for her friends. That's why I was happy, like yay! They're all evil, both rulers! Lina is going to bring down him, and then her mother!
But no. She doesn't. She fights, then goes back with him. Then lets him loop right back into yelling/shaking/pinning her. She plays with him like he's flirting, when he does it. And then she even sleeps with him. And she does that JUST AFTER finding out that he was deliberately leading the whole court to believe that she was his whore, so he could control her.
Gross.
I haven't seen a single goddamn redeemable thing about Jovan, but she can't keep away from him. She loves him. It kills me.
And then, lest you think well, maybe it's just one bad choice, but surely she has some self-respect ... then she has a conversation with the fucking guy who hired 3 people to sneak into her room at night and beat her nearly to death - he literally said to beat her to the edge of death. And he expresses that he feels bad about what he did. That's it. It makes him feel bad. And she forgives him. Without a moment of thought. Without a moment of consequence. She tries to help him hide that he was the guy who did it, even, but when that's found out, she comes to his defense.
This woman thinks so little of herself that I can't help but think little of her. And I hate it, because this could be a good story, but this is just utterly gross.
Firstly, for the record, I'm taking this off my fantasy list. There's no supernatural elements. It's a fiction book, taking place on a fiction world, but I don't think it qualifies as fantasy unless it has something supernatural going on - magic, supernatural beings, etc.
Anyway.
I'm falling on the side of dislike for the lead female. She's inconsistent, she makes terrible snap judgments, and she's falling in love with a complete dickhead. More on that in a minute. But basically, I can't get past the way Olina/Frost/Willow/who-the-fuck-ever (she goes by like 5983456 names in this series) allows herself to be treated. We get to see so many scenes of her being a badass - and that really plays out in this book, honestly - followed immediately by her being a doormat. Plus ... what is her plan? I mean, there's zero thought behind any action she takes - she pretty much just careens from encounter to encounter. I don't understand how she ever thought she was going to pop away for a couple days to investigate, and then pop back. I don't understand how she planned to track down the arrow ... she pretty much just wanders down the street asking every random person she encounters. Guys, I'm being literal - that is ACTUALLY what she does. I don't understand what her plan is when she decides to be, like, a cage-match fighter. What? No, really, why? How does this further ANY of her goals? How does she see any of this playing out?
The answer, unfortunately, is that when it comes to broad choices, she is TSTL. But it's weird because she can - and does - handle herself capably in other encounters. She seems to careen wildly between acting like 15 year old, and acting like a 25 year old. It is incredibly frustrating.
In this book, we meet and become attached to a whole new cast of characters. The good news is that I liked them all a lot more than I liked the dickheads from book 1 - I just don't really care for either court at all. I thought this was a good development, and I hoped it meant that the overbearing violent asshole (Javon) that seemed to be the future love interest was not going to be that at all. Honestly, a lot of this book played out like ... plot twist, he was just as much a bad guy as her mom!
Because you guys, he was.
He's been over-the-top violent towards her from the moment we met him. At first, it was fine - there was a question about whether she killed his brother. But then, when he clearly believes she loved his brother, he's still that way. He is constantly smashing into her room, pinning her to walls, ripping her veil off, shouting in her face, grabbing her around the arms and holding her off the ground to shout more... I mean, wtf, seriously. Plus, he knows her secret, but can he be a decent fucking human being about it? No. He screams at her that if she takes her veil off, he'll kill her, and he refuses to tell her why. JUST LIKE HER MOTHER. Then when she realizes why - she finally gets a look at her face (*eyeroll*) - she realizes he's been using her as a trump card. He knows her secret, and that puts him in a pretty strong position, both against her mother and also possibly as his little pet ruler that he can control via blackmail.
Yuck.
Then in this book, we see that he apparently considers a large swath of his own people - the outer rings folks - to be scum. He regularly rounds up the people in this fight club thing, and just ... has his guards kill them in this big dome, Gladiator style. What? Why?! Who does this?! This gets his guards killed. It gets all these people killed ... people he hasn't bothered to investigate or anything. He knows less than nothing about them. They are in a fight tournament thing, where the goal is to knock your opponent out - it's basically MMA fighting. And we spend the vast majority of this book in this location, where we discover that while, yes, there are some violent assholes (Slay, etc), the vast majority of the fighters are pretty cool, supportive, etc. But Jovan has his guards just round up everyone - including people on the sidelines (Crystal) - herd them to the dome, and then send guards in there endlessly until they are all dead.
Who the fuck does that? Is that supposed to be a character I like?
But Lina fights him. And fights for her friends. That's why I was happy, like yay! They're all evil, both rulers! Lina is going to bring down him, and then her mother!
But no. She doesn't. She fights, then goes back with him. Then lets him loop right back into yelling/shaking/pinning her. She plays with him like he's flirting, when he does it. And then she even sleeps with him. And she does that JUST AFTER finding out that he was deliberately leading the whole court to believe that she was his whore, so he could control her.
Gross.
I haven't seen a single goddamn redeemable thing about Jovan, but she can't keep away from him. She loves him. It kills me.
And then, lest you think well, maybe it's just one bad choice, but surely she has some self-respect ... then she has a conversation with the fucking guy who hired 3 people to sneak into her room at night and beat her nearly to death - he literally said to beat her to the edge of death. And he expresses that he feels bad about what he did. That's it. It makes him feel bad. And she forgives him. Without a moment of thought. Without a moment of consequence. She tries to help him hide that he was the guy who did it, even, but when that's found out, she comes to his defense.
This woman thinks so little of herself that I can't help but think little of her. And I hate it, because this could be a good story, but this is just utterly gross.